Barges wait to load sand dredged from the Hau River in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.

The government has launched investigations into sand exploitation to clamp down on the illegal export of the important building material that Vietnam is quickly running out of.

The ministry on Monday led an inter-ministerial team of inspectors through several sand dredging and export sites in the city of Can Tho as part of an investigation of the Mekong Delta region as a whole.

Nguyen Thanh Son, deputy chairman of Can Tho People’s Committee, said local authorities couldn’t control sand exploitation in the city.

Sand dredging has pulled several riverside streets into the water and is a great threat to general safety on the waterfront.

The city has halted the issuance of sand exploitation licenses and extensions, according to the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment. The department said it had rejected three license applications and 11 extensions recently.

Can Tho has reserves of around 25 million cubic meter of riverbed sand and 16 enterprises have 27 sand exploitation licenses in the municipality.

Shady shipments

Nguyen Huu Co, head of the Can Tho Customs Department, said several local enterprises had exported sand illegally as most export contracts are not thoroughly inspected by local agencies.

The central government announced a temporary ban on sand exports last October, but contracts signed before November 30, 2008 were still allowed.

Co said many enterprises had signed contracts to export large volumes of sand by last November 30, while others had changed their signing dates to avoid the ban.

Nearly 7 million tons of sand was shipped from Can Tho to foreign countries in the first eight months of 2009, compared to only 1.4 million tons in the whole of 2008, Tuoi Tre quoted Co as saying.

Pham Ngoc Son said the inspection team would continue Mekong Delta inspections, with results to be submitted to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung by September 15.

The Ministry of Construction has instructed local authorities to draft specific sand exploitation plans to be submitted by the end of this year.

The plans would have to specify the volume sand slated for exploitation as well as the quality of sand in local reserves.

Precious pebbles

Pham Khoi Nguyen, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, told Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper that local authorities had issued too many sand exploitations licenses, leading to “rampant dredging.”

But he also said many enterprises were dredging sand without licenses or were exceeding the amounts allowed by their licenses.

He said the resource was precious and the country needed it to enforce its land foundations as Vietnam has been ranked as one of the top five countries most likely to suffer the worst consequences of rising sea levels.

“The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment strongly opposes the export of any type of sand and aims to strengthen the management of sand exploitation,” Nguyen said.

Export irregularities

The Ministry of Public Security has also been conducting an inspection of sand exploitation and export in the delta.

Initial investigation results showed that several enterprises in Can Tho, An Giang and Dong Thap had falsified temporary import and re-export documents in order to export local sand, according to a Tuoi Tre newspaper report citing an anonymous police source. The ministry said it would continue to investigate these documents.

Inspectors said they had found irregularities in 1,000 customs declaration documents from seven sand export enterprises that had been approved by the Can Tho Customs Department. The abnormalities included the use of modified photocopies of contracts and agreements filed without the signature of the exporter.

Other irregularities included delivery dates prior to contract dates or after contracts expired. Some documents had been stamped by exporters whose operations had been suspended due to previous violations, inspectors said.

The ministry also found that the dates on many sand export contracts had been altered to before November 30, 2008, the date that Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung issued a directive for the ban on sand exports.

Rampant violations

The Department of Transport in Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province last Friday seized a ship and a barge carrying 350 tons of illegal sand on the Rang River.

Early this month, border guards at Vung Tau Port caught 11 boats and two barges dredging sand illegally on the Mo Nhat River. They had already exploited 170 cubic meters of sand from the river.

Ba Ria - Vung Tau People’s Committee recently said they had banned 17 sand dredging ships from exploiting sand at the Loc An Estuary. One of the boats was from China while another was from Thailand.

According to a report by the Vung Tau Port Authority, the two foreign ships had acquired licenses from the Ministry of Transport, while the other 15 belonged to Phuoc Luan Company. Ten of Phuoc Luan’s boats were unregistered.

Last week, local residents and resorts near the estuary complained dredging in the area was threatening their homes and land.

Residents and local authorities by the Hau River in An Giang Province have also complained that rampant sand exploitation had severely eroded the river’s banks.

Nguyen Huu Phuoc, chairman of Binh Thanh Commune in An Giang’s Chau Thanh District, said a 2,000-meter section of river bank had collapsed into the river, taking land up to 15 meters inland at some places.

He estimated that the commune had lost more than two hectares of land every year due to sand dredging along local rivers.

Hundreds of residents in the province’s Phu Tan District have lost land and homes to erosion from sand exploitation.

Source: Thanh Nien, Agencies